What is advertising? part 6

The Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
Also known as the unique selling position, the USP is often one of the
most oft-misunderstood elements of a good sales letter. It’s what
separates your product or service from your competitors. Let’s take a
quick look at some unique selling propositions for a product itself:
1) Lowest Price – If you’ve got the corner marketed on budget
prices, flaunt it. Wal-Mart has made this USP famous lately, but
it’s not new to them. In fact, selling for cheaper has been
around as long as capitalism itself. Personally, I’m not crazy
about price wars, because someone can always come along
and sell for cheaper. Then it’s time for a new strategy…
2) Superior Quality – If it outperforms your competitor’s product
or is made with higher quality materials, it’s a good bet that
you could use this fact to your advantage. For example,
compare Breyers Ice Cream to their competitor’s. From the
packaging to the wholesome superior ingredients, the quality is
evident. It may cost a little more than their competitor’s ice
cream, but for their market, it sells.
3) Superior Service – If you offer superior service over your
competitor’s, people will buy from you instead. This is

especially true with certain markets that are all about service:
long-distance, Internet service providers, cable television, etc.
4) Exclusive Rights – My favorite! If you can legitimately claim
that your product is protected by a patent or copyright,
licensing agreement, etc., then you have a winner for exclusive
rights. If you have a patent, even the President of the U.S.
must buy it from you.
Ok, what if your product or service is no different than your
competitor’s? I would disagree, because there are always differences.
The trick is to turn them into a positive advantage for you. You want
to put your “best foot forward.” So what can we do in this scenario?
One way is to present something that your company has devised
internally that no other company does. Look, there’s a reason why
computer store “A” offers to beat their competitor’s price for the
same product by X%. If you look closely, the two packages are never
exactly the same. Company “B” offers a free scanner, while company
“A” offers a free printer. Or some other difference. They are
comparing apples to oranges. So unless you find a company with the
exact same package (you won’t…they’ve seen to that), you won’t be
able to cash in.
But what if you truly have the same widget for sale as the guy up the
road?
Unless your prospect knows the inner workings of both your and your
competitor’s product, including the manufacturing process, customer
service, and everything in-between, then you have a little potential
creative licensing here. But you must be truthful.
For example, if I tell my readers that my product is bathed in steam
to ensure purity and cleanliness (like the cans and bottles in most
beer manufacturing processes), it doesn’t matter that Joe’s Beer up
the road does the same thing. That fact that Joe doesn’t advertise
this fact makes it a USP in your prospect’s eyes.

Want some more USP examples?
• We are the only car repair shop that will buy your car if you are
not 100 percent satisfied with our work.
• Delivered in 30 minutes or it’s on us!
• No other furniture company will pay for your shipping.
• Our recipe is so secret, only three people in the world know it!
As with most ways to boost copy response, research is the key with
your USP. Sometimes your USP is obvious, for example if you have a
patent. Other times you must do a little legwork to discover it (or
shape it to your target market).
Here’s where a little persistence and in-person selling really pays off.
Let me give you an example to illustrate what I mean:
Suppose your company sells beanbag chairs for kids. So you, being
the wise marketer that you are, decide to sell these beanbags in
person to prospects before writing your copy. After completing
twenty different pitches for your product, you discover that 75
percent of those you visited asked if the chair would eventually leak.
Since the chairs are for kids, it’s only logical that parents would be
concerned about their youngster jumping on it, rolling on it, and
doing all things possible to break the seam and “spill the beans.”
So when you write your copy, you make sure you address that issue:
“You can rest assure that our super-strong beanbag chairs are triplestitched
for guaranteed leak-proof performance. No other company
will make this guarantee about their beanbag chairs!”
For a really in depth look at how to perfect a better USP checkout
http://www.informativebooks.com